"Looking Life Right Straight in the Face": The Art of Purvis Young

This exhibition of paintings and drawings by the self-trained artist Purvis Young (1943-2010), will feature works that were a recent gift to the Block Museum with key loans that represent the themes which absorbed him throughout his career. For much of his life Young lived and worked in the Overtown section of Miami. His paintings, rendered in ink or paint on found materials ranging from scrap lumber, manila folders, and wallpaper books, center on a small, repeating group of images that included horses, trucks, trains, lines of people, and close-up images of the faces, sometimes behind bars.

Image: Purvis Young, Landscape with Figures, ca. 1990, Painting on found board. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art Northwestern University, gift of Selig D. Sacks Family Collection; 2013.6.7.